macOS

Double click on the pkg file and follow the instructions. If you haven’t already installed XQuartz and “command line tools”, you will be asked to download and install them (XQuartz must be installed to launch the nrniv application (NEURON), “command line tools” must be installed for mknrndll to work).

Problem: nrngui and neurondemo fail, and the error message says something about

dyld: Library not loaded: /opt/X11/lib/libX11.6.dylib

Solution: X11 is missing. Previous versions of macOS would install X11 automatically, but now you have to install xquartz from http://xquartz.org

Problem: No gui when NEURONDEMO is launched.

Solution: This happens when you try to use the X11 version of NEURON but X11 hasn't been installed on your Mac. The fix is to install X11. If you have OS X 10.3 or later, the X11 installer may already be on your hard drive, or on one of the system CDs. Otherwise, you can go to the independent XDarwin site (http://www.xdarwin.org/) and install from there.

Problem: Can't compile mod files.

Compiling MOD files requires the command line tools. If you don't have this, the simplest way to get them on recent versions of macOS is to type "gcc" on the command line and follow the prompts.

Problem: I want to use parallel hardware to handle large models or speed up simulations.

You shouldn't have to do anything special to environment variables--all these things are supposed to find each other automatically.

Problem: mknrndll does not work.

Solution: Install the Development environment that came with your system. The installer may be on your hard drive or on a separate system CD. Check the current OS X page to see if Apple mentions whether using the installer's default choices actually installs enough of the development environment. It is the "XCode" package that you need to install.

If you can't find your system CD, you can download XCode from the Apple web site. Be sure to get the version of XCode that matches your OS version, e.g. 10.4, and processor, e.g. Intel.

Problem: How to get "focus follows mouse" behavior, so you can move to a window and press a button with just one click.

Solution: This happens if you try to install NEURON to a directory that already exists, e.g. if you installed a previous version of NEURON. Either uninstall the previous version (recommended), or delete the old directory.

Notes

nrn*setup.exe allows you the choice of whether to

associate hoc and nrnzip files with neuron.exe and mos2nrn.exe respectively. The former allows you to click on hoc files to launch them with neuron.exe, and the latter allows you to autolaunch NEURON models from ModelDB

create a folder on your desktop with shortcuts to relevant NEURON items

create a NEURON program group in the Start menu

Installation directory

You can install NEURON to any location that DOES NOT CONTAIN spaces. The default is c:\nrn.

Uninstalling

The Start menu has a NEURON program group with an Uninstall shortcut. Uninstall will cause hoc and nrnzip files to be not associated with any program, and removes the installation directory, the desktop NEURON folder, and the NEURON program group (if those were created by the installer).

If for some reason the NEURON program group does not exist, then use the standard MSWindows "Add/Remove Programs" tool.

Linux

Installation hints

.deb package: Double-click the deb package, or in a terminal as root typedpkg -i filename
where filename is the name of the deb file. This will install NEURON in /usr/local/nrn, and InterViews in /usr/local/iv..rpm package: As root, typerpm --install filename
where filename is the name of the rpm file. This will install NEURON in /usr/local/nrn, and InterViews in /usr/local/iv.

The rpm installs contains all the hoc, mod, and other files that would be produced if you installed from the sources. This should work for any version of gcc and any recent version of RedHat, CentOS, or Fedora Linux, and it may work for other Linux distributions as well.

Of course, your Linux installation must be capable of compiling source code. Some Linux distributions offer a choice of more than one installation configuration. Configurations described as "minimal", "light", "compact", or "laptop" often lack the gcc compiler and libraries that are necessary to translate source code into executable programs. But it makes sense to check what is actually included, no matter what the configuration is called. We have seen "default" and "desktop" configurations that lacked gcc and important libraries!

Please let us know if you discover that it is compatible with some other Linux distribution, or if you would like us to build an RPM for some other Linux distribution.